Guitar

A six-hour sale of 122 lots from the collection of singer-songwriter and Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler took £7.01m (or £8.84m including buyer’s premium).

With estimates from £200, here are five previews of items coming up at auction this week.

Rod Stewart’s leopard print armchair, David Bowie’s first studio recording and Bee Gee and Beatles guitars have all been snapped up by fans of the rockers this week.

50 years on and Hendrix still rocks – Hansons Auctioneers has sold a note, written on the back of a packet of guitar strings in 1967, for £5700.

Bath auctioneers Gardiner Houlgate (20% buyer’s premium) set a new house record on March 12 with the sale of a guitar by the celebrated French luthier Jean-Baptiste Voboam (1658-after 1731) for £120,000.

The Black Beauty, the prototype for all Gibson Les Paul guitars, will appear at Guernsey Auctions’ February 19 sale in New York.

There was a great deal of international interest, particularly from institutions, when this five-course baroque guitar by Matteo Sellas of Venice, from the second quarter of the 17th century, was offered at Gardiner Houlgate’s September 19-20 sale in Bath.